Personal Information Collection Statement

The primary purpose for which we collect your personal information is to provide you with the services you have requested. You agree we may use and disclose your personal information and other data for this purpose and also for secondary purposes, including to personalise your user experience and to promote carsales and third party products and services to you. Our Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use and disclose your personal information, the extent to which your personal information may be disclosed to overseas recipients and how to access, correct or complain about the handling of your personal information.

carsales Privacy Policy

This policy sets out how carsales.com Limited (carsales) and group companies within the carsales Network (see list here) collect, use, disclose and manage your personal information.

If through using a carsales Network website or our services you disclose personal information to a third party website, this policy will not apply as between you and the third party and you will be subject to the privacy policy of that third party.

By accessing or using carsales services, including the carsales Network, you agree to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in the manner described in this Privacy Policy. Words defined in the carsales Terms and Conditions of Use have the same meaning in this Privacy Policy.

Carsales and privacy

carsales respects the importance of your privacy and is bound by the Privacy Act 1988) (Cth) (Privacy Act) including the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), and applicable privacy regulations. carsales is committed to protecting your privacy when managing your personal information and has policies and procedures to ensure that personal information is handled in accordance with the Privacy Act and the APPs.

What personal information is collected?

Personal information collected by carsales will depend on the circumstances of collection and on the services that we are providing to you and may include:

identification details, which may include name, birth date, gender, security questions and answers;

contact information which may include email address and mobile phone number;

bank account and credit account details;

user IDs and passwords;

services provided to you, including saved items and searches

business information, such as ABN and licence number;

information submitted in placing an advertisement, for example vehicle details and pricing;

information submitted in applying for or requesting a quote for a finance or insurance related product such as finance or insurance;

information about the devices on which you visit the carsales Network, and your activities on those devices or sites;

third party account details (for example where you sign in through a social network);

your public social profile information (e.g. name, profile picture) together with the email address you use to log into your social media account;

records and content of communications with carsales or any other person including records and content using Communications Services (as that term is defined in carsales’ Terms and Conditions of Use);

if you participate in any surveys we, or a third party service provider acting on our behalf, may conduct from time to time, personal information relating to your survey responses;

if you are applying for employment with us, personal information that is relevant to such employment; and

information obtained as a result of your use of our mobile website or application such as geo-locations and unique device identifiers.

Please note that any records and content provided in hard copy format may be stored and scanned electronically by carsales.

carsales, and the carsales Network, do not collect sensitive information as defined in the Privacy Act, such as racial or ethnicity information, political opinions or associations, criminal records (save where provided by law enforcement authorities) or health information. However, subject to obtaining your prior consent, carsales may collect sensitive information from you in the course of considering an application for employment.

How is personal information collected?

carsales collects personal information in a number of ways, including:

directly from you when you provide information directly to carsales or carsales Network companies in person, by phone or in writing (whether electronic or otherwise), for example when you create an advertisement on one of our websites; when you enquire about an item on one of our websites; when you subscribe to a newsletter or any alerts; when you purchase goods or services from carsales or a third party via the carsales Network; when you enter a competition or promotion conducted by carsales, or in a contract with your business to provide you with our services;

directly from you when you communicate with carsales or any other person using carsales Communications Services;

from third parties such as resellers of carsales services and service providers to carsales;

operators of linked or served web sites, applications and advertising on the carsales Network;

social networks where you choose to share that information when creating an account;

from 3rd party data providers and other entities where you have directed or otherwise consented to the collecting entity (or a service provider on its behalf) sending us data;

through use of carsales proprietary software in which personal information is stored;

from organisations identified or described under the heading ‘How is personal information disclosed’, which include carsales Network companies, our service providers and other third parties so that we may provide an enhanced and more relevant user experience, service or product to you.

carsales may also collect personal information about you if you are a carsales shareholder. This information may be collected from you directly when you subscribe to receive email alerts via the carsales website or from third parties such as carsales’ share registry.

How is personal information used?

carsales will use the personal information it collects for the purpose for which you provided it, the purposes disclosed in this privacy policy, any related secondary purposes which you would reasonably expect and for any other purpose you have consented to.

More specifically, your personal information may be used for the following purposes:

to maintain appropriate business records;

to research, develop, improve and use within carsales products and services and by its outsourced service providers to provide and improve their services;

to respond to an enquiry or provide our services, products or assistance that you request from us;

to pre-populate / customise / provide shortcuts on our websites;

to conduct surveys to determine use and satisfaction with carsales Network services;

to generate statistics in relation to the carsales Network;

for the purposes of feedback, reviews and ratings;

to promote and market special offers and other services to you (if you do not want to receive these, please let us know by clicking here or using the unsubscribe facility in a direct marketing communication sent to you);

for purposes connected with the operation of the carsales Network;

for staff training and quality assurance;

to aggregate personal information with our third party partners for the purpose of personalising the advertising you receive from us and them; and

to contact winners of trade promotions run by carsales.

How is personal information disclosed?

carsales may disclose personal information to individuals and organisations other than carsales. The organisations to which we may disclose personal information include:

carsales Network companies and staff;

the public if you advertise with carsales or use publicly available Communications Services;

individuals and organisations that advertise with carsales if you submit an enquiry or seek or acquire certain services through carsales - depending on your enquiry or the services being sought or acquired, these may include:

private advertisers;

licensed car dealers;

original equipment manufacturers;

car brokers;

operators of third party web sites, co-branded web sites and applications (Linked Sites) and advertising served to the carsales Network by third parties;

financial service providers;

insurance service providers;

vehicle inspection service providers;

transportation service providers;

payment services providers;

outsourced service providers who assist any of the above persons to provide services;

If you do not want carsales to disclose your personal information to these individuals and organisations, you should not submit an enquiry or acquire those services.

outsourced service providers who assist carsales to provide its services including:

information technology providers;

marketing and market research advisers and survey providers;

professional advisers;

data service providers, who may also disclose your personal information to our third party partners for the purpose of personalising the advertising you receive from us and them;

payment platforms.

entities to whom you request we send your information;

resellers of carsales services;

organisations involved in a sale/transfer of a carsales Network company or any of its assets, business or shares;

to assist government or regulatory authorities or police; and

as we are required by law, for example pursuant to a subpoena or in accordance with unclaimed money legislation.

Where carsales provides information to a third party at your request (for example where you submit an enquiry), you acknowledge that your information will be handled by that third party in accordance with its privacy policy and not in accordance with this privacy policy.

Where carsales discloses your personal information to a data service provider, carsales will take all reasonable steps to ensure those data service providers comply at all times with the Privacy Act and the APPs.

Maintaining personal information quality

carsales strives to maintain accurate and up-to-date records. To facilitate this, please let us know if any of your details change. carsales may verify the accuracy of personal information it holds against information about you held by a third party. You may update certain personal information through your membership account (if you have one) or click here to contact us by email.

carsales may destroy or de-identify personal information once the information is no longer deemed required by the business.

How to access your personal information

You generally have a right to access your personal information, subject to a few exceptions provided by law. If you wish to access your personal information please click here or on the contact us link at the bottom of this page. Please remember to provide as much detail as you can as this will help us to find the information. Generally, there will be no charge for this service, however you may be required to verify your identity before any information is released to you. Depending on the volume, type or method of access to the information you request, carsales may charge you some fees, however, these will not be excessive and will not apply to the making of the request. Please note that depending on the volume or nature of the information required, it may take a number of days to fulfil the request.

Transfer of personal information outside of Australia

Some of carsales’ service providers are located outside of Australia, including in the United States of America and Canada. It may be necessary to disclose your personal information to those service providers for some of the purposes listed above. By providing carsales with your personal information, you consent to the disclosure / transfer of your personal information outside of Australia as set out in this privacy policy.

Dealing with carsales anonymously

You may deal with carsales anonymously by using a pseudonym, unless carsales is required or authorised by law to deal only with an identified person, or it is impracticable for us to respond to you if you have not identified yourself.

What if you don't provide personal information?

If you choose not to provide personal information when requested, carsales may not be able to provide you with the full range of carsales services.

Location information

When using the carsales mobile application, we may request permission to collect your location from your device via the permission system used by your mobile operating system. If you consent to the collection of this information, you can later disable it by changing the location settings on your mobile device. However, this may limit your ability to use certain features of our services.

carsales Network, Linked Sites and personal information

When you visit a website or use an application on the carsales Network, carsales records anonymous information such as IP address, time, date, referring url, and other referral information, device information and location, carrier, site interactions such as your access to website features, pages accessed, content, searching activities, lead submission, and files accessed and downloaded, type of browser and operating system. Such information collected by carsales may be linked to other information carsales and its Network companies hold about a user, compiling a complete profile about carsales users’ browsing, purchasing and other activities. This data may be used by carsales to categorise a user and provide personalised offers, marketing and advertising. Activity data may be shared with advertisers for these purposes where the user is already a customer of the advertiser.

carsales may use third party advertising companies to collect data and/or serve ads when you visit a website on the carsales Network. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address or telephone number) about your visits to websites and other media in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, visit http://networkadvertising.org/.

carsales uses "cookie" and other methods to collect and store the information set out above. A cookie is a small file that stays on your computer until, depending on whether it is a sessional or persistent cookie, you turn your computer off or it expires (this may be as little as 30 days or up 2 years or longer in some cases).

Cookies may be used by carsales or by service providers engaged by carsales to provide you with the full range of services it offers, remember your preferences, remember the sites you visit on the carsales Network, measure and analyse usage of the carsales Network and for security. Persistent cookies may be used to identify the sites you visit on the carsales Network and to personalise the advertising that you see when you make future visits to those sites or other sites or platforms. Cookie data and other data may be sold, licensed or otherwise provided to third parties via advertising exchanges or other data sharing platforms for this purpose. You may adjust your Internet browser settings to disable cookies. If cookies are disabled carsales may not be able to provide you with the full range of carsales’ services.

The operators of Linked Sites may collect personal information through the use of cookies and otherwise. carsales is not responsible for Linked Sites and recommends you read the privacy policy of Linked Sites before disclosing your personal information.

This site uses HotJar Ltd (HotJar) web analytics service. HotJar may record visitors’ activities on the carsales Network, which may include mouse clicks, mouse movement, and scrolling activity performed on the carsales Network, user screen size, browser versions and other user experience based metrics. Unless HotJar specifically indicates that it collects your personal information, for example when conducting an on-site survey on behalf of carsales, HotJar does not collect any personally identifiable information, including credit card information, that you enter in this website. For more information see Hotjar’s Privacy Policy. We are using the information collected by HotJar for analysing usability of the carsales Network and associated purposes. To opt out of this analytics service, please email via this link.

carsales uses Nielsen/NetRatings web analytics tools to measure and analyse internet usage across the carsales Network of websites. This service helps us measure and respond to our online consumers. The data collected does not identify a user personally. Users can access more information about their choices regarding Nielsen/Netratings here http://www.nielsen.com/digitalprivacy#choices.

What if I have a problem?

If you have a problem, complaint, want to change your personal information or just wish to enquire about privacy please contact us.

carsales treats complaints relating to privacy extremely seriously. If you submit a concern or complaint, we will endeavour to deal with it comprehensively
and reach an outcome with which all parties are satisfied. If you are not satisfied with our response to your complaint (after providing us with a reasonable time to respond) or would like further information about privacy in Australia, then we suggest you contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s website.

How this policy changes

This policy may change over time. All changes will be published on this website.